On This Day in History

1971 – Brig Gen Jeanne Holm becomes 1st female general officer in the US Air Force. She is pinned by Secretary of the Air Force Robert C. Seamans, Jr. and Lt Gen Robert J. Dixon, […]

    1958: Operation BLUE BAT. After the Iraqi government falls, tensions increase in Lebanon. This strain leads Lebanon’s President to seek US security assistance. TAC dispatches its Composite Air Strike Force BRAVO to the

  1974: Gen Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, the first USAF Chief of Staff, dies at Walter Reed General Hospital at age 83. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

1921: Brig Gen William “Billy” Mitchell’s Martin MB-2 and Handley Page bombers sink several ships off the Virginia Capes. The tests study the use of bombs on ships to suggest how ship design could counter

1962: Operation DOMINIC-Sunset. From Johnston Island, a Thor IRBM carries a megaton-plus hydrogen bomb above 200 miles in altitude. The detonation marks the highest thermonuclear blast by a US bomb, and perhaps, the highest of

  1944: Lt Col Clifford Heflin flies his C-47 on the first landing mission into France to rescue airmen who had parachuted behind enemy lines. 

1944: MEDAL OF HONOR. During an attack on the Ploesti oil refineries, Lt Donald D. Pucket’s B-24 receives heavy and direct hits and crashes. For his courage and supreme sacrifice in attempting to save the

  1942: Flying a Lockheed Vega A-29 Hudson, Lt Harry J. Kane and crew of the 396th Bomb Squadron attack and sink a German submarine (U-701) off Cherry Point NC to make the first sure

  1989: President George H. W. Bush presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civi­lian award to Gen James H. Doolittle (retired) at the White House. Doolittle is the only person to have

1992: Operation PROVIDE PROMISE. The US European Command launches the operation to airlift relief supplies to Bosnia-Herzegovina on a regular basis.